Traverse City, Mich. -- A federal plan to lower thresholds for warning the public about contaminated beach water is drawing protests from state officials in the Great Lakes region and along the ocean coasts who say the revisions could unnecessarily scare away swimmers.

The EPA in 2012 updated decades-old recreational water quality criteria designed to guide all states in developing standards for protecting bathers from exposure to bacteria linked to fecal contamination. Officials in the Great Lakes region say they were told early this year by EPA's regional office in Chicago that they were in compliance.

But in April, the EPA announced additional requirements for coastal states to qualify for federal grants that help cover the costs of testing beach water quality. Among them were new triggers for advising the public about unsafe levels of bacterial pollution.

"We're not chasing people off, not gating the parking lot," Southerland said Monday. "They can swim if they want. But we're warning them there's a higher risk of illness if they do."

Shannon Briggs, a toxicologist and beach monitoring coordinator with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, said the new conditions probably would cause her state and many others to forfeit this year's grants. They also would likely cause a significant and unjustified increase in warnings and beach closures, she said.

"We see the new requirements as unattainable and not helping our beaches in a cost-effective manner," Briggs said.

The EPA has awarded about $130 million in grants since 2000, under a program called the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act, or Beach Act. About $10 million is allocated in a typical year.

Beach cleanliness standards are based on numbers of bacteria detected in water samples that could cause nausea and diarrhea. Technicians measure E. coli levels at freshwater beaches such as those in the Great Lakes. They use a different bacterium, enterococcus, for ocean water measurements.